Right alt and ctrl keys don't work in Edgy

[Twiggy794]

I was running an Edgy upgrade before and recently did a fresh install, but now when I try to use my rightmost alt and ctrl keys on my laptop, they don't work at all. The left ones work just fine. Anybody know what could be up? I've tried fiddling with the keyboard layout settings in GNOME with no luck.

[bstock]

I have a similar issue. Control works fine on the right, but not the Alt key.

I did find a solution though. If you run 'xmodmap' from a terminal, you can see that it says 'mod5' is assigned to the Alt_R key. If you run this command:

xmodmap -e "remove mod5 = Alt_R"

That seemed to take care of it for me. Now all you need to do is set that up to run every time you run ubuntu.

Go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions
Go to the Startup Programs tab
Click 'Add'
Copy and paste the previous command into the text area and click OK.

That should take care of the alt key. If you go to terminal and just run 'xmodmap', you can copy and paste the results and I can see what I can do about your control key.

Just FYI, I have a Logitech G15 USB keyboard. I don't know if this is a problem specific to this keyboard or not.

[Twiggy794]

Thanks for the reply, I think I'm seeing what's up here but I'm unfamiliar with xmodmap so I'm not terribly sure how to go about adjusting this. I did a quick xmodmap to check the output, here's what I got:

shift       Shift_L (0x32),  Shift_R (0x3e)
lock        Caps_Lock (0x42)
control     Control_L (0x25),  Control_R (0x6d)
mod1        Alt_L (0x40),  Alt_L (0x7d)
mod2        Mode_switch (0x5d),  Mode_switch (0x71),  Mode_switch (0x74)
mod3      
mod4        Super_L (0x7f),  Hyper_L (0x80)
mod5        Mode_switch (0x5d),  Mode_switch (0x71),  ISO_Level3_Shift (0x7c)

Seems that I have Alt_L specified twice, where I assume one should be an Alt_R?

[bstock]

Alright. After some more research and playing around, I think I found a solution. If you run 'xev' and look at the results when you push the right Alt key, it outputs:

KeyPress event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x3e00001,
    root 0x186, subw 0x0, time 3193017024, (167,-14), root:(1234,563),
    state 0x10, keycode 113 (keysym 0xfe03, ISO_Level3_Shift), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XFilterEvent returns: False

While the left Alt key gives:

KeyPress event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x3e00001,
    root 0x186, subw 0x0, time 3193324833, (759,352), root:(767,421),
    state 0x10, keycode 64 (keysym 0xffe9, Alt_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XFilterEvent returns: False

Notice with the left alt key, it says keycode 64 = Alt_L. If you look at the right alt, it says keycode 113 = ISO_Level3_Shift. I don't know wtf that is, but it's wrong...

Now from terminal we can run 'xmodmap -pke' to get a list of what keys our keycodes are assigned to. You should see similar results. We only really want to look at keycodes 64 and 113, since those are what we're dealing with.

keycode 64 = Alt_L Meta_L
keycode 113 = ISO_Level3_Shift

So, all we should need to do is assign keycode 113 to Alt_R right? That's easy enough. Run the following:

xmodmap -e "keycode 113 = Alt_R"

Now lets make sure the changes took effect. Run 'xmodmap -pke' again and take a look at keycode 113. You should now see:

keycode 113 = Alt_R

Success. Go to your browser, navigate through a few pages and try Alt_R+left and Alt_R+right to see if it's working.

Now we want to set this so it works every time we reboot. Should just have to add it to our sessions.

Go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions
Go to the Startup Programs tab
Click 'Add'
Put in xmodmap -e "keycode 113 = Alt_R" and click OK. Reboot and try it out.

You can probably remove the last command I said to enter, since that didn't seem to work. Let me know how it goes.

[kungfoofool]

I'm working on a Dell Inspiron 6000 and I have the same problem. I tried your code and unfortunately it didn't fix it. When I run xev, it does show that I'm hitting Alt_R but it doesn't do anything.

Neither of my alt or ctrl buttons on the right side of the keyboard work. Has anyone else had any luck with this?

[bignate]

I am having the same problem. Dell Inspiron 9400. Tried mapping the right alt key to no avail.

[hellmet]

Same problem here..
Anyone filed a bug??
I am on Intel 915GAV

[nsleiman]

same here

[bignate]

Sorry forgot I posted this here...

I just came up with a workaround. Although there are many ways to accomplish this, I created a shell script to set up my environment when I log in...and one of the lines in it fixes this issue.

in ~/.startup.sh:

xmodmap -e "keycode 113 = Alt_R Meta_R"

Then I added that to my login session:

System->Preferences->Sessions: Choose the Startup Preferences tab and add the script.

Not elegant, but it works.

[jgubes]

I assume you're in Gnome. Have you tried this out in KDE? It doesn't seem to be working for me.